Location : Casino Luxembourg - Forum d'art contemporain
Artists : Esben Weile Kjær, Ásta Fanney Sigurðardóttir, Mun Sing
Warm-up : galR (Nani Xtra & 6iozinho)
Curators : Ásta Fanney Sigurðardóttir, Kevin Muhlen
Spark Epoch
Luxembourg Art Week opening night
A night of experience that spans through different timelines, narratives and stories. It brings together questions about the messages that make up our perception of reality and the world at large. From myths to pop culture, a bridge is created to present a fusion of elements, what is our idea of the past and what fuels our imagination about the future. That said, stories from the past, present and future are intertwined in an evening of performances.
The diverse practices of Ásta Fanney Sigurðardóttir, Esben Weile Kjær and Mun Sing are at the heart of Spark Epoch, offering a dynamic exploration of time, culture, and lived experience. Together, their works range across different fields and subjects, offering a profound reflection on what it means to be alive today.
PERFORMANCES
Esben Weile Kjær: Hardcore Freedom Revisited
Using architecture, electronic rhythms, light shows, textiles, reflective elements, video, and live performances as leverage, Esben Weile Kjær zooms in on his own generation, the millennials, exploring its narratives about youth, freedom and popular culture, while casting an inquisitive and critical eye on its ideals.
On stage, the artist has created a hybrid space for ten performers, blurring the boundaries between nightclub (with its pulsating soundtrack from early Detroit techno to current poppy EDM), art institution, stage, and fashion boutique. A neon version of Tinkerbell from Disney’s Peter Pan (1953) hovers in the air, and is reflected on the floor, recalling a key scene in the animated film when, gazing at herself in the mirror, the character becomes "aware" of her body.
While referencing pop moments in all their randomness, Hardcore Freedom is particularly attentive to the anarchist potential of celebrations, partying, and subculture.
Ásta Fanney Sigurðardóttir: Babel Nebula
Ásta Fanney Sigurðardóttir draws us into a world where myth meets futurism. This live performance explores the human voice and its power to shape our understanding of the past, present, and future. Blurring the boundaries between ancient stories and futuristic visions, the artist merges languages invented for fantasy fiction and sci-fi TV shows with absurd, unfamiliar tongues.
Through spoken, whispered, and fragmented sound, Ásta investigates the textures of voice and the noise that creates meaning. The performance shifts between mythic storytelling – recalling the narratives humans have passed down through generations – and speculative futures, incorporating fragmented, pop-driven songs with musical elements and entertainment. Here, new languages emerge, reflecting the kinds of messages and environments we create and inhabit.
In this fluid space, speech becomes both ritual and rebellion, blending the familiar with the new. As the artist moves between structured languages and abstract vocalisations, we are invited to consider how imagination and sound can create new realities, and what stories will shape our future.
BIOGRAPHIES
Ásta Fanney Sigurðardóttir b. 1987) is an artist, composer, and poet. A graduate of the Iceland University of the Arts, she is the author of five books. Her work has been exhibited and performed at the Reykjavík Art Museum, Kling & Bang, the Living Art Museum, Hafnarborg, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, the Nobel Prize Museum, Kulturhuset in Stockholm and Kulturhuset in Oslo and more. She received the poetry prize Ljóðstaf Jóns úr Vör in 2017 and was nominated for the Bernard Heidsieck–Centre Pompidou Literary Prize in 2021.
Sigurðardóttir’s practice evokes the transience of dreams, blending multiple worlds and artistic disciplines into one. Her works simultaneously appear and disappear, their results often evading one’s grasp as different perspectives, timelines, and storylines come together in a multifaceted whole that envelops the viewer in a familiar yet alien way. Like the surface of water, Sigurðardóttir’s works embody unseen depths while also reflecting the vastness above in a momentary glimmer. Only an afterimage seems to remain floating there, but an undercurrent looms, hidden, intangible like a nod or a wink from a stranger in the distance.
Through her innovative interdisciplinary practice, Sigurðardóttir addresses spiritual, esoteric aspects of human experience on personal and societal levels. She explores ways of moving closer to our intuition at a time when technology continues to isolate us from one another and close us off from ourselves. As such, her work often touches on the abstract and the surreal.
Esben Weile Kjær (b. 1992) is an artist based in Copenhagen. Spanning sculpture, video and performance, Esben Weile Kjær's work draws on the history of pop culture and pop music to investigate themes of nostalgia, authenticity, and generational anxiety. In an attentive though reckless visual language, he investigates today’s event economy, often focusing on marketing tactics and the aesthetics of the entertainment industry – mainly to consider art’s relationship to its surrounding culture industries. As such, his work attempts to not only mimic other cultural modes of performance (such as those found in parties, protests, press conferences, and ballets), but to become performative pop culture in its own right—often through interventions in public and commercial spaces, using props such as podiums, confetti cannons, fences, and party lasers.
Mun Sing is the solo project of Harry Wright. Mun Sing’s uncompromising ingenuity of sonic weaponry explores bone rattling, fragmented cyber grime and radioactive trap templates. An attack of fluctuating polyrhythms that pan from left to right creating a delirious effect. Amplified dissonant noise. Syncopated and visceral neo-EBM drum patterns that disintegrate, dissolve and accelerate then starkly shrink with an adrenaline fuelled industrial intensity.
Mun Sing is Wright’s tool to challenge the conventions and aesthetics of modern day club culture. To experiment with ideas of inclusivity and positivity, influenced by mainstream pop music by injecting pop’s marketing methods into the more serious, austere club world. Dance routines, obnoxious visuals and brash costumes all feature in the live show, where Mun Sing uses these elements as a means to highlight inclusivity, movement and fun.
galR is a Luxembourg-via-Berlin production label exploring spaces through adventurous club aesthetics. It is run by artists/DJs Charel Hoffmann (aka Nani Xtra) and Philippe Hoffmann (aka 6iozinho), both known for their eclectic mixing style between niche and avant-pop.
In parallel with its audio-performative seminar practice at Universität der Künste Berlin, the multi-headed label is anticipating the launch of its cultural off-space in Luxembourg City, supported by Œuvre Nationale de Secours Grande-Duchesse Charlotte and Ville de Luxembourg.
Opening night at Casino Luxembourg
